Samsung’s New Galaxy S10 Lineup Announced with Gear VR Support

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Samsung today announced its latest and greatest flagship phone lineup, the Galaxy S10, S10+, S10e, and S10 5G. The company has confirmed that all variants of the S10 are compatible with the latest Gear VR headset.

Gear VR, a snap-in smartphone headset, was released initially way back in 2014, but Samsung is continuing to support the product line which has seen several iterations over the years, each offering support for the company’s newer Galaxy phones. The latest version of the headset (SM-R324NZAAXAR), which supports an impressive 14 different Samsung smartphone models, now also supports the four new members of the Galaxy family.

Gear VR runs Oculus’ mobile platform software, and for the most part has an identical content library to Oculus’ own Go headset.

Samsung announced the Galaxy S10 lineup today with what the company calls a “dynamic AMOLED display” which is certified for displaying high dynamic range content in the HDR10+ format, offering a greater range of brightness levels for richer, more realistic looking content.

At present, there’s no talk of the S10’s HDR capabilities coming to VR content via Gear VR, but the possibilities do seem intriguing, especially for ‘virtual personal theater’ use-cases.

The S10, S10+ and S10 5G all share the same WQHD+ resolution (3,040 × 1,440) but have varying screen sizes (6.1, 6.4, and 6.7 inches) which means a slightly different PPI of 550, 522, and 505, respectively. The S10e, which is billed as the more compact and affordable variant in the lineup, uses a lower resolution 2,280 × 1,080 display.

Because Gear VR was originally designed for phones with a 16:9 aspect ratio, some of the extra screen width on newer Galaxy phones like the S10 doesn’t get used in VR mode, meaning the S10 series will effectively use the same 1,280 × 1,440 per-eye resolution as older Galaxy phones when used in Gear VR (which is on par with Oculus Go). With the smaller S10e, it isn’t clear exactly how much of its display will be useable by Gear VR, but it could only be up to 1,140 × 1,080 per eye considering its lower resolution display (which would put its resolution in line with the Oculus Rift).

Image courtesy Samsung

In addition to adding a cut-out right in the display for the front-facing camera, Samsung also managed to embed a hidden fingerprint scanner directly under the display, moving it invisibly from the back of the phone to the front (the S10e is again the odd one out here with its fingerprint scanner located on the lock button).

For the S10 lineup the company is also touting advanced cameras which now include three individual camera sensors on the back of the S10 and S10+ (12MP telephoto, 12MP wide-angle, and 16MP ultra-wide), and four on the S10 5G (which adds a 3D depth camera). The S10e is equipped with the wide-angle and ultra-wide angle cameras only.

Image courtesy Samsung

Apart from the others, the aptly named S10 5G is Samsung’s first smartphone equipped with 5G connectivity, the next-generation data technology which carriers and smartphone makers say will offer a leap in bandwidth and latency.

The intersection of 5G and VR has been much discussed at a hypothetical level; big bandwidth could drastically improve the experience of streaming video content to VR headsets, especially in the case of 360 3D footage which is very often hamstrung by bandwidth constraints. With low enough latency there’s also the potential of rendering high-end VR visuals in the cloud and then streaming them to low-end devices like Gear VR. Solutions for the latter are still very much a work in progress however, and it isn’t likely that S10 5G will have any meaninful impact on Gear VR users in the next 12 months, especially considering that 5G availability from carriers is still in its infancy.

Image courtesy Samsung

Pre-orders for the S10, S10+, and S10e begin tomorrow, February 21st, and Samsung is including the Galaxy Buds headphones as a pre-order bonus for the S10 and S10+. Pricing starts at $900 for the S10, $1,000 for the S10+, and $750 for the S10e.

In the US, the S10 5G will be available in the first half of 2019, exclusively through Verizon for a limited time, while other carriers will offer the phone “at a later date this summer.”

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must have daydream support too …also arcore ….and the 5g will have depth sensing camera on the back apparently

Renato Wisocki Jr

5G version will also enhance AR and VR experience

dk

I hate it when people r chanting 5g 5g 5g ….as if it’s some sort of panacea for ar/vr problems …..it’s just faster internet

MorePopcornPlease

The 5G infrastructure isn’t even close to being usable for 99% of the population. The range is very short with 5G and there needs to be antennas EVERYWHERE. Getting 5G antennas into the new phones is the easy part. Good luck connecting to 5G on the go. WiFi will be easier to find for the next few years.

dk

not to mention even 4g is crap most of the time

JesuSaveSouls

Very good for vr the vr friendly samsung.

sfmike

Wouldn’t be to surprised if they dropped Gear VR support as it’s not that big a moneymaker for them and the corporate world has soured on VR. There was no mention of Gear VR at all in their big presentation. That says a lot.

impurekind

I think it’s the highest selling VR headset to date, with probably well over ten million at this point, so it can’t be that bad.

airball

Most Gear VR’s were not sold, they were bundled and basically unused. Samsung does not run the store either where money is transferred, that’s Oculus.

MorePopcornPlease

Those numbers were before the Oculus Go was released. I never used my Gear VR after getting the Go. The Gear VR was the best option in it’s day. But those days have past.

impurekind

I don’t think that’s what he was talking about.

Tommy

That must be some serious wishful thinking to expect any mention of GVR at an event like that. VR is so yesterday. Talking about it at an S10 launch would be like talking about some old tech.

DC

Until they launch their 5G 6dof headset, we wont see any new updates about “gear vr”. I’m fine with that. What else could they do….

Mike

Hmm. So, 5 years after the initial GearVR release, the exact same visual specs. Same resolution, and I’m assuming same low 60Hz refresh rate. And I’m assuming it still doesn’t support positional tracking. After 5 years. What a joke.

Baldrickk

Well, yeah. it is still using a phone screen as a display. What were you expecting?

Renato Wisocki Jr

I was expecting positional tracking, of course, as Qualcomm Snapdragon 855 is already capable

MosBen

It’s less about the 855 supporting positional tracking than it is about the other 14 phones that the headset enclosure supports, and the software platform is built for. Maybe in a few more generations, when the full body of Samsung phones in use have hardware that supports positional tracking, they’ll release an upgraded model that doesn’t support the older legacy hardware.

dk

yes same oled screen with great colors and same angular res ….with the low res of 1440×3040
it’s a phone first which is why the cooling is not great for 6dof tracking for a long use case and obviously your battery is dead pretty quickly even with 3dof

Mike

Not 1440×3040 for VR – it can only use 1440×2560 of that. Same as 5 years ago. I would think in 5 years SOMETHING would have improved with phones. Why not at least a 90Hz setting that would normally be off, or a small bump in resolution, or positional tracking at the expense of slightly limiting the graphics quality? Why not at least RGB instead of Pentile? Also, why couldn’t they have actually used that extra horizontal resolution to widen the FOV a little? Pimax has already proved it’s possible.

dk

like I said…..the same nice angular res as always ….because it’s a 1440 display …and plus additional display area on the side(most likely out of view) it’s not more pixels in the same 16by9 area
like I said it’s a phone if u spend 5 bucks or 50 on vr features and u sell 5 million units or 15 million …u r wasting money because there is no grantee that more than a small percentage of the users will spend money in the vr ecosystems….and the other reasons I mentioned
what is happening next is……search for …..”Qualcomm Snapdragon 855 Phones Can Power AR/VR Glasses Over USB-C”

DC

Until they launch their 5G 6dof headset, we wont see any new updates
about “gear vr”. The tech needs to de developed to take it to the next level.

Baldrickk

Not a fan of the camera putting a hole in the screen. That said, I almost never use the selfie camera anyway. I don’t take selfies, for me, they could remove it entirely.

impurekind

Yeah, I’m really not a fan of cameras that cut into part of the screen or notches that do similarly. I just want a nice clear screen, and I’d take a slight border at the top and bottom again where the cameras and stuff would go to get this.

DC

It’s an incremental stopgap design. The tech they showed off last november embeds the cameras under screen, but it’s not production ready yet. First step was obviously placing the camera in the screen. Next step: under.

impurekind

Happy to see the newer phones are compatible with Gear VR.

MosBen

I haven’t used mobile VR since getting my Rift and switching to a Pixel 2 from a Samsung Galaxy S6. I’d love to get back into it, but there just doesn’t seem to have been huge improvements in that area, despite having far greater hardware turnover than we’re seeing in the PC-based HMDs.

Jonas Quinn

The latest version of the Gear VR is actually the SM-R325, not the SM-R324.

Why not release a FS version without the front camera? FS = Fuck Selfies.

DC

Because the S10 front camera design is an incremental stopgap design. The tech they showed off last november embeds the cameras under screen, but it’s not production ready yet. First step was obviously placing the camera in the screen. Next step: under.

D Luigi

ONe can only dream… with imbedded cameras in the screen or in the periphery would allow eventual some basic eye tracking for VR and AR apps in the future. Gear VR would not have to be modified then since it’d be integrated in the display rather than HMD?! Wishful thinking.

D Luigi

Will the increased power of the S10 and S10+ CPU and GPU allow higher FPS in Gear VR (say 72 or 90fps)?
Also, with the new version of ARCore support for the S10 phones, with the increased CPU overcome the CPU bottle neck and heating-up issue during extended AR app use?

D Luigi

My S9 has a pixel density of 570dpi, with the S10 at 550dpi and S10+ at 522dpi, will I notice a difference? With the S10+ in particular will this result in a loss of resolution or increased screen-door-effect?

I am planning in pre-ordering the S10 and S10+. I’d use them for VR but also AR with ALVR and ALVR-ARCore and for AR the S10+ with its improved vapor chamber cooling would stay cooler and perform better and for longer sessions before getting hit with thermal throttling of the CPU.

On the other hand most of my Gear VR use will remain VR and it seems the graphic quality might be better with the S10, isn’t it?

Thank you for your inputs and clarifications?
D

Alec Nguyen

No you wont see the difference. It’s really only lowered because the screen size is increasing so they arent as bunched together but the quality is higher on the s10+